Beavers suffer setback loss to Washington State

They may have entered Thursday's contest winners of four of five, but the cold reality in Corvallis is the fact that the OSU men's basketball team doesn't appear ready to take the next step anytime soon.

After an 83-73 home loss to Washington State University, the Beavers (15-9, 5-7 Pac-12) slid into ninth place in the conference standings.

And that's in a conference that may receive as few as one or two NCAA Tournament bids.

Forget the "Big Dance," Oregon State had its sights set on a top-4 finish in the conference, which would have meant a first-round bye in March's Pac-12 Tournament.

That, at the moment, seems outside the realm of possibilities.

The loss was the Beavers first head-scratcher at home since their 14-point loss to Idaho in December.

"It's been awhile since we had a horrible outing, and I thought that this was the horrible outing," coach Craig Robinson said.

For a team that struggles as much on the road as the Beavers do (2-5 in Pac-12 road games this year), coughing up winnable home games simply won't cut it.

"It's disappointing, being our first game back at home in awhile and we didn't execute as well as we should have," Jared Cunningham said.

The Cougars (12-11, 5-7) entered Thursday's contest 0-5 on the road in Pac-12 play. And that mark included losses to Utah and Arizona State, two of the conference's bottom three teams.

Robinson, who said most of his postgame comments to his team weren't printable, thinks OSU may have came in with a bit too much confidence.

"It looked like to me that they thought all they needed to do was show up and they'd win," Robinson said. "That's absolutely not the case."

Oregon State trailed 29-28 with just over five minutes remaining in the first half, but WSU closed the half on a 17-3 run to break the game open.

From that point forward, OSU didn't give the 5,782 Beaver fans in attendance a legitimate reason to get excited.

The Beavers trailed by 15 at half, 15 at the under-16 timeout, 16 at the under-12 timeout, 16 at the under-8 timeout and 12 at the under-4 timeout.

Much of the reason why OSU couldn't make a game of it was the fact that WSU got whatever it wanted inside.

The Cougars outscored the Beavers 40-20 in the paint and finished with 12 offensive rebounds, each of which seemingly led to uncontested put-back layins.

The Cougars got 24 points from forward Brock Motum, who torched the Beavers for 26 points in the Cougars' 81-76 December victory in Pullman. Forward D.J. Shelton added 14 points and grabbed six offensive boards.

"I don't know what it was with our frontcourt," Robinson said. "I was trying to find a guy who could come in and do something."

Cunningham was the lone offensive bright spot for a team that shot 37.3 percent (22-for-59) from the field.

The junior guard scored 33 points and knocked down a career-high five treys.

"You don't get many outings like that, and you want to be able to take advantage of it," Robinson said of Cunningham's efforts.

Midway through the second half, Cunningham had more points (24) than the rest of the team combined (23).

"The supporting cast has got to do a better job of making open shots," sophomore guard Roberto Nelson said.

Nelson, who entered Thursday's game 4 for his last 24 from 3-point land, broke out of his slump with 14 points and hit 3-of-6 from long range. But much of that came well after the game had been decided.

Sophomore guard Ahmad Starks, who's been a slump similar to Nelson's, finished 3-of-15 from the floor and 2-of-13 from beyond the arc.

The Beavers now turn their attention to the University of Washington, who they'll face at 2:30 p.m. Sunday.

"We're playing for our lives Sunday," Robinson said. "We're kind of out of the race, but we've got to keep getting better so we can be competitive in the Pac-12 Tournament."

Grady Garrett, sports editor

Twitter: @gradygarrett

sports@dailybarometer.com